I’m sorry for the long silence on this blog and the long delay in replying to the friends that commented on my articles. I’ve been quite busy in the last weeks and I spent a lot of time traveling around Italy (not for pleasure!). In the meantime I’ve been renewed as an MVP on April the 1st (nice date to renew someone with such a bad sense of humor…). I decided to celebrate my MVP award with a new recipe (to be honest, I celebrated by eating the results of this recipe!) and I decided to call it “penne ......

During the MVP summit I had a chance to visit Seattle and discover that all the miths about its bad weather are not true (at least during the week I spent there!). I also visited the wonderful Pike Place Market and see (and taste some) all the different kinds of fish, fruits and vegetables displayed on its stands. Salmon is, for sure, one of the most interesting products. You can see huge salmons lying on the ice of some of the stands and also being thrown in the air between the employees of the ......

This is a recipe that I carefully planned and designed after checking the contents of my fridge after a three weeks holiday in California. I found some salmon at the local supermarket and I had to decide how to cook it. Olives and leeks seems the only things still edible inside my fridge. The result tasted quite good, but my perception could have been impacted by the jet-lag... so handle this recipe carefully! Ingredients: - salmon (one large filet serves two people) - leeks (200 g) - olive oil (three ......

This is a simple but tasty recipe, made with simple and "poor" ingredients. Ingredients (for four people): - 160-200g of pasta (spaghetti, bucatini or linguine) - 8 tablespoons of grated bread - 8 fillets of anchovies - 4 tablespoons olive oil - some parsley Cook the pasta in boiling salted water as described in the other pasta recipes. While the pasta is cooking put the olive oil in a pan and heat it. Add the anchovies and let them cook for a while. Then, using a wood spoon, crush them until they ......

This is quite a classic way to cook spaghetti and, luckily, it's also quite easy to cook. For four people you need: - 320/400g of spaghetti - 8 tablespoons of olive oil - 4 small dried chilly peppers - 4 cloves of garlic - salt Put water in a large pot, make it boil and add salt (like in other pasta recipes). When it boils again add the spaghetti. Put the oil inside a pan, add the chilly peppers and the garlic cloves without their "skin". If you want to enhance the garlic taste you can slice the ......

Today I got an e-mail with congratulations for my MVP 2009 award. It may be an April fool's day joke... but if it's a joke who made it took great care in creating a fake web site with lots of contents an interesting things. I'm very happy and proud of that recognition of the work I did replying to questions on newsgroups, talking at conferences and also writing on this blog and I should thank all the people who helped me with replies to my questions or corrections to my replies, support and friendliness. ......

I've been in Rome last week for the Windows Embedded Seminar and I had a chance to appreciate a very tasteful pasta that it's typical of that city. It's also a very simple and quick recipe, and one of my favorites when I came home late from office and I've only a few minutes to cook something edible. The ingredients list is quite short: - long pasta (spaghetti or bucatini) - grated cheesee (the original recipe uses "pecorino romano", cheesee made with sheep milk) - pepper powder - olive oil - salt ......

Italian cooking is known for its pasta recipes, but in the part of Italy where I live (north-west) many recipes use rice instead of pasta. This is a simple but tasty way to prepare it. It's a traditional recipe that use simple and cheap ingredients to add taste to rice. Ingredients (for 4 people): - 360g rice (the kind of rice I like more for this kind of risotto is "carnaroli") - one large onion - 300g sweet beacon (not smoked is better) - two glasses of red wine (the best thing is to use the same ......

The name of this pasta came from mount Sila (Calabria), in the southernmost part of the Italian peninsula ("on the other side of Italy" from where I live). I eated it in a restaurant when working for a very kind customer (they brought me out to eat in great places and also offered me a tour of the city center of Cosenza, a very nice place to visit). I didn't asked for the recipe, so this is a sample of cooking through reverse-engineering. Remember that I'm not a professional cooker! Ingredients (for ......